re: Snake ID

women

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Honest to gawd, it is not that difficult to recognize four venomous snakes. One group has rattles, the other is banded with three colors and then a copper head and cottonmouth are easy to recognize if one spends a little time with some reference materials. Snakes are okay. There is no need to whack them.

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People have an instinctive reaction to snakes in South Louisiana. Took me a while to learn to suppress that instinct. My wife hasn't But she is learning.

I was also taught to leave king snakes alone as a youngster, so that probably helped me. If you grow up in a farming family, that is generally the type of snake you leave alone.

Kinda looks like a pine snake, but the face looks not as aggressive bigger eyes and a inline head

Beautiful

As Alx said, they tend to be mixed. You’ll have some species like racers that almost always bite, some like Eastern hognoses or mud snakes that pretty much never bite, but most species tend to fall in the middle ground. You’ll find some kings bitey and some not so bitey. That even applies to many rattlesnake species.

Then you’ll have some that you think are docile and you’re just handling them casually with no indication that they want to bite, and out of the blue they chomp down on you. One of my vivid childhood memories was a seemingly tame king snake my brother was holding for quite a while, which then suddenly tried to swallow his hand. That’s why I only take venomous free-handling so far - you can never trust a snake.

ETA: Non-venomous snake bites really don’t hurt bad at all. Much less than a bee sting. I always say the best way to overcome a fear of snakes is to let one bite you. It’s not really a big deal.